In my case it's primarily 1) and 4). When we bought the property we had a
power line from the street to one pole, a sagging arc to another pole that
was rotten at the base (it came down to about 5' at the low point), then to
another pole where it branched into four separate wires to the house,
garage/shop, planting shed and pump house. We also had a string of clear
incandescent lights hung on trees down the driveway.
A few years ago I pulled all that down and replaced it with underground
power, CATV cable, and phone line.
When we dug trenches for the line from septic tank (near the house) to the
drain field (up near the road), I had a trench open from house to road. I
installed a couple of 3" conduits in that trench, one halfway to a HyTower
install site and another to the front of the property with a goal of
eventually putting an Rx array and/or beverage termination out there. I
added another 3" conduit from house to tower. I also have conduit in the
wall from the garage up to my shack/office, which is a room over the
attached garage.
I don't now need cables dangling off the side of the house. I can put them
into conduit in the wall, and then can emerge near ground level right about
where the electric company's ground rod is.
Lots of prep, but we went through some effort to build a nice house here and
I wanted to avoid snaking a bunch of coax up the side of the house to holes
in the wall...
73 de Dick, K6KR
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim
Brown
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 11:14 AM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Conduit To Towers
Another question to ask in this discussion is what cables benefit from being
in conduit in YOUR installation. The primary purposes of conduit are 1)
protection of the cables; 2) routing cables around/under/over obstacles; 3)
ease of adding new cables to inaccessible routes; 4) burying them to make
them invisible. .
I have no obstacles, have no visibility issues, so when I 'moved here 7
years ago, tried installing cables on the ground. My on-ground cables
include 1/2-in and 7/8-in Heliax, 1/2-in CATV hardline, Commscope
non-flooded RG6 for two reversible Beverages, and RG213-size coax. So far I
have had no varmint issues, and even the indoor-rated power wiring I use for
the long run for 24V to one rotator have held up OK. I wouldn't use that
indoor-rated cable for 120VAC, but I consider it OK for 24V. I've even had
about 50 ft of one of those RG6 Beverage runs directly buried for about 6
years.
Installing conduit and pulling cable into conduit adds work and expense.
I put a LOT of EMT (thinwall steel) in the house I owned in Chicago when I
renovated it, and I had it installed in the building that became my ham
shack and office here in W6. I'm glad that I did both. I'm equally happy
that I haven't tried to use any conduit outdoors.
Also, stuff like heliax is pretty resistant to varmints -- my neighbor K6XX
probably has had close to half a mile of it laying on the ground for many
years.
Sometimes we can get away with running cables OVER obstacles like driveways
and sidewalks. Obviously, visibility can be an issue with the XYL, but so
far, I've had pretty good luck hanging dipoles in plain sight on days when
the XYL is out running errands. YMMV. :)
73, Jim K9YC
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